The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced a slew of projects that will collectively receive about $60 million and work on making solar electricity more affordable.

The projects range from engineering new solar cells to figuring out a more efficient way to market, install and monitor a solar energy projects. The funding also will target efforts to help utilities manage the increasing amount of solar electricity flowing in and out of the electric grid.

Managing a grid that runs well only when there is a balance of supply and demand is particularly challenging when the rate and amount of energy from solar power plants will fluctuate throughout the day.

Solar power generation accounts for less than 1% of the country's electricity mix. It's growing quickly though, but still, it will take decades before it to make a big dent in displacing fossil fuels. The amount of solar energy generation will likely increase by 79% in 2013 and 80% in 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The government has always been a significant source of funding for research and development, and its role has perhaps become more crucial than ever given the declining amount of venture capital that is going into solar in recent years.

Many investors began to pump lots of money into solar in mid-2000s, particularly in solar cell development and manufacturing startups. Then they realized that they needed to put in a whole lot more money and wait much longer to get the returns they expected, if that was even possible. It was a painful lesson that has caused many of them to shy away from making solar investments, or at least the materials and manufacturing technology part of the field.

Here is a quick look at some of the projects announced today:

1. Solar and big data: Minnesota-based Sun Number is getting $1 million to assemble and analyze information about the materials and age of roofs, the history of energy use at each home and other data in order to create a "Sun Number Score." The score aims to help solar companies and homeowners figure out the best solar energy system designs for different types of roofs and reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to accomplish that.

West Virginia-based Geostellar plans to use $750,000 to create a "Solar Project Record" that will collect solar energy production data from individual rooftops, utility rates, government incentives and local permitting rules for installing solar. All those data will be made available to app developers to come up with ways to reduce the cost of financing, installing and maintaining solar panels.

2. Cutting project costs: California-based Sunrun is getting $1.6 million to come up with software to shorten the process for developing a solar power project, from automating the designs to securing permits to construction.

Demeter Power in Florida plans to use the $500,000 to demonstrate and expand its newly launched online portal for bringing together project developers and commercial building owners who are interested in using PACE -- Property Assessed Clean Energy -- to fund solar panel installations. PACE programs allow property owners to pay for solar projects by adding a line item to their property tax bills.

3. Boosting efficiency: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is getting $4.5 million to come up new steps for making cadmium-telluride thin films that could convert 24% of the sunlight they receive into electricity. , which has made its fortunes by producing cadmium-telluride thin films, is taking part in the project. The thin films the company is selling have around 13% efficiency.

Arizona State University is leading a project with $3.5 million SunShot funding to create ultra-thin silicon solar cells that could reach 29% efficiency. Silicon solar cells are about 160 micron thick these days, and many companies and research institutions are working on making them thinner to reduce the production cost while also improving their efficiencies. The efficiencies of silicon solar cells on the market today are mostly in the mid- to high teens.

4. A solar-ready grid: The Electric Power Research Institute, which represents utilities, will receive about $873,000 to create computer models and simulations for figuring out the impact of an increasing amount of solar electricity that gets pumped into the grid in southeastern United States. The study should help utilities better manage their supply and demand and keep the grid humming along.

T he National Rural Electric Cooperative Association will use the $3.6 million to standardized the designs for solar power generation projects ranging from 250 kilowatts to 1 megawatt. It also will come up with what it hopes will be an efficient process for getting those projects financed and built. The association plans to work with 15 cooperatives in 16 states to complete 23 megawatts of projects within three years.